"We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan."

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Shoeless Joe's Shoes

I had the weekend mostly off. I had to work late into Friday night (as in, I finally got to bed at 4am), but was able to sleep in late on Saturday. And today, I checked out the museum.Specifically, I went to the Great Lakes Science Center. I didn't spend a lot of time at the science exhibits -- it's a pretty standard set of exhibits though it must be fairly new and the exhibits thus in very good shape. I went for the "Baseball as America" touring exhibit. I hadn't gotten to the exhibit while it was in Chicago last year, so took the time today.

It took about two hours to go through the whole thing, and there were a lot of interesting bits. Yes, including Shoeless Joe Jackson's shoes -- so that's where they went!

They also had a special exhibition today -- two local teams that play baseball using 19th century rules. Pretty much the same game, but the differences were pretty interesting -- no balls, strikes only counted for swinging and missing, the "striker" is out if the ball is count on a single bound off the ground (as well as caught on the fly). Really interesting: the ball was called a foul if it hit the ground first in foul territory -- even when it first hit a fielder (in the hands) in fair territory. The third baseman wasn't trying to knock it foul -- it's just that it was hit so hard he couldn't field it, and it bounced off his hands.

After that, I came back to the hotel and did a load of laundry (just jeans, actually, as I'm fine for other clothes). And... that about sums up my exciting weekend.

I'll try to do my Gencon report in the next couple of days, assuming the work doesn't absorb all my time.